March 17, 2025

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Announcement of New Website: Rohingya Today (RohingyaToday.Com) Dear Readers, From 1st January 2019 onward, the Rohingya News Portal 'Rohingya Blogger' will be renamed and upgraded as 'Rohingya Today'. Due to this transition to a new name, our website will be available at www.rohing...

Rohingya News @ Int'l Media

Maung Zarni, leader of the Free Rohingya Coalition, speaks at a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo on Thursday. | CHISATO TANAKA By Chisato Tanaka, Published by The Japan Times on October 25, 2018 A leader of a global network of activists for Rohingya Mu...

Myanmar News

By Sena Güler | Published by Anadolu Agency on December 1, 2018 Maung Zarni says he will boycott Beijing-sponsored events until the country reverses its 'troubling path' ANKARA -- A human rights activist and intellectual said he withdrew from a Beijing-sponsored forum in London to pro...

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Article @ RB

Oskar Butcher RB Article October 6, 2018 Every night in an unassuming shop space located in Mandalay’s 39thStreet, Lu Maw and Lu Zaw – the remaining members of the Burma’s most famous comedy trio, the Moustache Brothers – present their show: a curious combination of comedy, political sa...

Article @ Int'l Media

A demonstration over identity cards at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh in April, 2018. Image: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images. By Natalie Brinham | Published by Open Democracy on October 21, 2018 Wary of the past, Rohingya have frustrated the UN’s attempts to provide them with documenta...

Analysis @ RB

By M.S. Anwar | Opinion & Analysis The Burmese (Myanmar) quasi-civilian government unleashed a large-scale violence against the minority Rohingya in the western Myanmar state of Arakan in 2012. The violence, which some wrongly frame as ‘Communal’, was carried out by the Burmese armed forces...

Analysis @ Int'l Media

By Maung Zarni, Natalie Brinham | Published by Middle East Institute on November 20, 2018 “It is an ongoing genocide (in Myanmar),” said Mr. Marzuki Darusman, the head of the UN Human Rights Council-mandated Independent International Fact-Finding Mission at the official briefing at ...

Opinion @ RB

Rohingya refugees who fled from Myanmar wait to be let through by Bangladeshi border guards after crossing the border in Palang Khali, Bangladesh October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj MS Anwar RB Opinion November 12, 2018 Some may differ. But I believe the government of Bangladesh is ...

Opinion @ Int'l Media

By Maung Zarni | Published by Anadolu Agency on December 15, 2018 US will not intercede, and Myanmar's neighbors see it through economic lens, so international coalition for Rohingya needed LONDON -- The U.S. House of Representatives Thursday overwhelmingly passed a resolution ca...

History @ RB

Aman Ullah  RB History August 25, 2016 The ethnic Rohingya is one of the many nationalities of the union of Burma. And they are one of the two major communities of Arakan; the other is Rakhine and Buddhist. The Muslims (Rohingyas) and Buddhists (Rakhines) peacefully co-existed in the A...

Rohingya History by Scholars

Dr. Maung Zarni's Remark: The best research on Rohingya history: British Orientalism which created the pseudo-scientific biological notion of "Taiyinthar" or "real natives" of #Myanmar caused that country's post-colonial cancer of official & popular genocidal Racism.  This co...

Report @ RB

(Photo: Soe Zeya Tun, Reuters) RB News  October 5, 2013  Thandwe, Arakan – Rakhinese mob in Thandwe started attacking Kaman Muslims on September 28, 2013. As a result, 5 Kaman Muslims were mercilessly killed and 1 was died in heart attack while escaping the attack. 781 Kaman Mus...

Report by Media/Org

Rohingya families arrive at a UNHCR transit centre near the village of Anjuman Para, Cox’s Bazar, south-east Bangladesh after spending four days stranded at the Myanmar border with some 6,800 refugees. (Photo: UNHCR/Roger Arnold) By UN News May 11, 2018 Late last year, as violent repressi...

Press Release

(Photo: Reuters) Joint Statement: Rohingya Groups Call on U.S. Government to Ensure International Accountability for Myanmar Military-Planned Genocide December 17, 2018  We, the undersigned Rohingya organizations worldwide, call for accountability for genocide and crimes against...

Rohingya Orgs Activities

RB News December 6, 2017 Tokyo, Japan -- Legislators from all parties, along with Human Rights Now, Human Rights Watch, and Save the Children, came together to host the emergency parliament in-house event “The Rohingya Human Rights Crisis and Japanese Diplomacy” on December 4th. The eve...

Petition

By Wyston Lawrence RB Petition October 15, 2017 There is one petition has been going on Change.org to remove Ven. Wira Thu from Facebook. He has been known as Buddhist Bin Laden. Time magazine published his image on their cover with the title of The Face of Buddhist Terror. The petitio...

Campaign

A human rights activist and genocide scholar from Burma Dr. Maung Zarni visits Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Extermination Camp and calls on European governments - Britain, France, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Denmark, Hungary and Germany not to collaborate with the Evil - like they did with Hitler 75 ye...

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Editorial by Int'l Media

By Dhaka Tribune Editorial November 5, 2017 How can we answer to our conscience knowing full-well what the Myanmar military is doing to the innocent Rohingya minority -- not even sparing children or pregnant women? Despite the on-going humanitarian crisis involving Rohingya refugees ...

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Myanmar journalists 'harassed' for reporting on Rohingya crisis



October 17, 2017

Sitting in a Yangon cafe, Min Min scrolls through old photos of a bombing attack on his house in Myanmar's northern Rakhine state.

The 28-year-old journalist told Al Jazeera that he was targeted last year due to his reporting of the Rohingya crisis.

It is a risky business, he said.

"If I keep trying to investigate the truth about issues in Rakhine state, my life could be in danger," Min, the editor of the Rakhine Investigative Agency, said.

The young journalist revealed that his monthly political magazine had to reduce its coverage of the mainly-Muslim minority group during the recent incidents in the western town of Maungdaw.

"We had to be silent, we almost don't cover it because we have to be very careful," Min said.

Since August 25, the Myanmar army has waged a brutal military campaign in Rakhine against the Rohingya, who have been denied citizenship and basic rights by the Myanmar government.

More than 500,000 Rohingya have fled the country, most arriving in Bangladesh by foot or by boat, with aid agencies struggling to cope with the influx.

The UN has denounced the situation as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

'You feel cramped'

Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her government have criticised international media coverage of the crisis and the UN workers documenting the Rohingya plight, dismissing their reports as fake news.

"Dismissal and denial of well-documented accusations, allegations and evidence is part of genocide," Maung Zarni, a Burmese human rights activists, told Al Jazeera's The Listening Post.

"Dismissing the reports of hundreds of women who have been wronged and violated and Suu Kyi dismissing them as fake news, fake rape. That was what you read on Aung San Suu Kyi's official Facebook page: fake rape," he added. 

Al Jazeera has spoken to half a dozen journalists from Myanmar who say they are facing some form of harassment, even death threats, for not toeing the government line on the Rohingya issue.

Local journalists say the censorship and harassment are affecting their jobs. 

"You feel more cramped, you feel trapped, when you're writing the news before it's published," said one Myanmar journalist.

He does not want to reveal his identity because he fears further public backlash.

"You have this fear what would be the public response, will they be swearing at me again online. This is directly affecting the journalists' work," the reporter added. 

'Dreadful PR machine'

Al Jazeera's Yaara Bou Melhem, reporting from Yangon, said the pro-government narrative is evident in the daily newspaper headlines.

One was about authorities saying they will continue to fight what they call "Islamic terrorism" in Rakhine state, she reported.

The government has classified the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which launched attacks on hundreds of police posts and an army base in August, a "terrorist group". 

Government social media accounts also say that Rohingya are burning their homes. 

A UN report recently cited the burning of Rohingya homes by Myanmar's military as part of campaign to expel and prevent the return of Rohingya to Myanmar, an allegation the government has rejected as false. 

"These kind of attacks are not happening," Wyn Myat Aye, minister for social welfare and resettlement, said.

"These accusations are spreading throughout the world even though there has been no attack after September 5 and this is due to the media's role. This is the very bad performance of the media. I can say that the media is bullying us."

Meanwhile, analysts have criticised the government's role in pushing its agenda.

"The government PR machine on this entire issue has been absolutely dreadful," Davis Mathieson, an independent Myanmar analyst, told Al Jazeera. 

"It's been something almost Orwellian, dystopian and incredibly cheap and nasty." 

The Rakhine Investigative Agency's Min Min worries not just for his country's future, but for his magazine.

He said two of his six-member staff quit this month because he would not let them use the words "Bengali terrorist" in their reports.

He remains afraid of what else he could lose if he continues to search for the truth in Myanmar.


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